Hand-driven lawn mowers ordinarily include a pair of spaced-apart wheels in contact with the ground for driving a cutting reel as the mower is pushed along.
Various hand-driven lawn mowers have heretofore been designed and constructed, some of which also include battery power for energizing the lawn mower.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,581,480 discloses a reel-type lawn mower including battery means for energizing the electric motor for driving the reel cutter.
Moreover, U.S. Pat. No. 2,417,613 discloses an electric motor control and differential gear drive for lawn mowers embodying a frame having a means for mounting storage batteries thereon rearwardly of the knife reel and the lower end of the handle.
Furthermore, U.S. Reissue Pat No. 24,594 teaches the use of a battery-powered disc-type lawn mower.
Yet another arrangement is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,732,673 which teaches the use of uni-directional clutches of a ratchet pinion type which are reversed thereby making such unit a motor-propelled lawn mower.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 1,401,156 teaches the use of a motor and a pulley arrangement engageable with a reel shaft of a lawn mower.
These and other arrangements of the prior art present relatively complicated structure. Furthermore, such prior art devices do not allow power assistance from the manual user of the lawn mower so as to share the power requirements for cutting with the electric motor.
It is an object of this invention to provide a relatively simple lawn mower having an improved power sharing arrangement between the electric motor and the manual power imparted by the user of the lawn mower pushing the lawn mower along the ground.
The broadest aspect of this invention relates to a reel-type lawn mower for cutting lawns including a cutting reel propelled by an electric motor connected to the cutting reel by transmission structure and propelled by drive wheels connected to the cutting reel by clutch structure for assisting the electric motor in propelling the cutting reel when greater cutting speeds of the cutting reel is required than delivered by the electric motor.
It is another aspect of this invention to provide a reel-type lawn mower for cutting lawns including: a frame; a pair of drive wheels associated with the frame; a cutting reel mounted for rotational movement about a rotational axis between said drive wheels; rechargeable battery attached to said frame; an electric motor attached to said frame and electrically connected to said rechargeable battery; transmission structure connecting said electric motor and said cutting reel whereby said electric motor propels said cutting reel when energized by said rechargeable battery for cutting said lawn; and clutch structure associated and engageable with said drive wheels when said lawn mower is manually pushed forward for assisting said electric motor in propelling said cutting reel when greater cutting speed of said cutting reel is required than delivered by said electric motor, and wherein said clutch structure is disengageable with said drive wheels when said lawn mower is manually pushed backwards.